Street Level

About two months ago I moved into a house on street level in the city. I have come to realize that this has both benefits and drawbacks.

While I love having my own space I find it is invaded by a plethora of junk mail on a daily basis. Catalogues from Coles, Woolworths, BuyLo, Freedom Furniture, Myer and David Jones are just a few of the many I receive. The quality of the paper stock improves as you work your way through the list, which is nice. But these don’t arrive in my letterbox, nope, they are thrown at my front door to be found when I get home somewhere on the step or amongst the plants on the front border. If it rains, they get wet and are useless pulp.

Puss gets to sit outside. He also get to go for walks in the evening, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t go far because he’s never gone for long. There are big scary noises out there in the big wide city world. The bush is much safer.

People trying to sell me stuff/convert me on a Saturday morning. So far I have had Jehovah Witnesses at 9.45am, raffle tickets for some charity or other (I don’t know who because it was 9.01am when the doorbell rang and I was less than polite), the Smith family at 0845 asking if I had any unwanted items (I told them they had more chance if they asked after 10, but no, I don’t) and finally the Jehovah Witnesses again at 9.30. I’m thinking of having a sign that says ‘if it’s the weekend and before 10AM, do even think about ringing my doorbell’

Drainage Problems. When living in a flat on the seventh floor, drains were never a problem. At Bucketlike we had a sess pit and again drainage was never an issue. But Now I seem to be the outflow for the neighbour sewage system. For the last couple of weeks my little house has been getting smellier and smellier, at the weekend I went outside to find the drain had overflowed I had fag butts, cotton pads and toilet roll all over the back garden. Eww! After two weeks of asking the agent to get it sorted, I figured a photograph of my new garden décor would do the trick. Today a plumber arrived on my doorstep at eight o’clock.

Buses. I don’t like them very much, they are unreliable, noisy, dirty and they scare Puss. They run up and down outside every 5-10 minutes in both directions. They do however alert me when they are just around the corner by being noisy and I have just enough time to run across the road to the bus-stop without having to ‘wait’. Marvellous!

All-in-all I like living at street level.